TV Tues. - This One's For You, Doc

I know it's been a long time in coming, and Dr. G'ovich has probably given up all hope that I'd ever get around to it, but this weekend I subjected myself to a 3 hour marathon of Viva La Bam!; the things I do for my friends.


For those unfamiliar with it, Viva La Bam! is an MTV "reality" show starring former Jackass cast member Bam Margera. Each week Bam comes up with some wild and crazy idea, and imposes it upon his friends and family, some of whom are much more willing participants than others. These ideas range from "Hey, let's all go to Vegas!" to "Hey, let's turn my parents house into a castle and have jousting matches!"

Here's my blow-by-blow on the six eps I watched, in order of my enjoyability, from lowest to highest; all titles are taken from TV.com, except for the Galoon ep, which wasn't listed.

"Destination Brazil": After a comment by Bam's uncle, Don Vito, about Brazil being in the Bahamas, Bam decides to take Vito to Brazil; since Bam's parents opt of going, Bam delegates one of his crew named Dico to make sure that they experience Brazil at home. My favorite parts of the episode revolved around this secondary storyline, when Dico decides to not only transform their house into a rainforest, but also dresses up in camouflage in order to hide himself in their house, jumping out to scare them periodically. What can I say, I'm a sucker for "jumping out and scaring people" situations; blame it on my Enoch blood.

"Raab's Russian Mail Order Bride": During a prank involving cutting the pants off of a sleeping Raab, Bam finds a photo of Raab's Russian mail order bride (apparently obtained during an earlier episode) who went back to Europe right after the wedding. Bam decides that the gang needs to head overseas and track her down. Meanwhile, he sends his parents off on a separate European vacation where they have to endure time with the Dudesons, some Finnish friends of Bam who apparently annoyed the heck out of his folks on a previous ep.

"Lost Lambo": After some smack talking, Bam and his friend Ryan Dunn decide to have themselves a drag race between Bam's Lamborghini and Dunn's limo. Before it can happen, though, the lambo disappears. Bam goes through great efforts to find out who took it, including subjecting his friends to polygraphs. The lambo turns back up and the race is on. It looks at first as if Dunn might actually win, but his engine blows. Dunn balks on performing his end of the bet (to dress up in a French maid outfit and french Raab), and Bam tells him "To get out of this, you either have to make me laugh or puke." Dunn takes him up on the offer, and pays a woman at the bar to do a truly, truly disgusting act: sucking on Don Vito's nasty toes. And so, Dunn was off the hook, for the act did indeed make him both laugh and puke.

"Destination Mexico": Tired of the ice and snow, Bam decides that the crew should head to Mexico, but he refuses to allow Don Vito to come along; instead, he makes a bet with Vito: if Vito can learn 10 Spanish phrases by the time they get back, Bam will give Vito his Humvee; if Vito loses, Bam tells him he'll have to be his "pet Mexican." Bam decided to invite along his Finnish friends the Dudesons who I first saw in the Russian bride episode; yes, this is the trip where they annoyed the heck out of Bam's parents, and yes, this episode aired after that on in the mini-marathon. Anyway, one of the Dudesons talks non-stop, but only in Finnish; it's not until the Russian bride episode that they find out he does know English and was just refusing to do so in order to be a pest. It was kind of funny watching Bam's parents realizing that there were actually people out there who were able to try their patience more than their son. Favorite parts of the episode were Don Vito (who is unintelligible at the best of times, and thus constantly subtitled) trying to learn the 10 Spanish phrases Bam picked for him. In the end, he got all but one right, and he only missed that one because Dico, who was supposed to be teaching him, gave him the wrong phrase. Vito decides he was robbed and swipes Bam's spare keys, taking the Humvee.

"Sailing to the Galoon": After coming out to find that Bam and the guys are tearing up her pool, Bam's mom April asks why they can't go and play in the river instead. Bam uses this as an inspiration to go rafting down the Brandywine to the Delaware; Vito goes off, saying repeatedly "You can't make it to the Delaware Ocean!" Once again, a bet is made; if Bam and the crew fail to successfully make it to the Delaware by a set time, Vito will have the pool all to himself all summer. In order to make the trek, they have special rafts constructed, including a big red shoe (Converse, I believe), a Tom Sawyer-esque raft with a keyboard on it for music while they're rafting, a giant hot dog (that one was Vito's), and a Viking ship. The trip down the river was pretty funny, mainly due to Vito's increasingly incoherent ramblings as he consumed more and more alcohol; at one point Bam finds out that Vito was right and they can't make it to the Delaware, so they ply him with more beers until he passes out, and then carry him and his raft a mile over land until they hit the waterway that does hit the Delaware; Vito never has any clue. He finally gets fed up with the journey, declaring that he can make it faster on foot, so it then turns into a race to see if the rafters can make it to their destination before Vito can find his way down the highway; lots of scenes of Vito yelling at passing cars asking where the "galoon" is. I think this episode helped prove that my enjoyment of Bam is directly proportional to the amount of incoherent Vito moments.

"Episode 39": My favorite ep starts out with the sort of thing that makes me not want to watch the show: Bam decides that Vito needs a door leading from his bedroom to the outside, so he demolishes Vito's bedroom bay window. Vito is, quite naturally, ticked off. He yells and screams at Bam and then storms off into the house; Bam says "Gee, I think he's really mad," and the crew all clamber through the wreckage to see if they can't calm Vito down. Vito, meanwhile, has circled around, hopped into Bam's hummer, and driven off, not realizing that Dunn is passed out in the back. When Dunn wakes up, he decides to help Vito out and the two of them go on the lam. Bam tries to track them down, putting out missing posters with Vito's face; Dunn sees them, and goes to one of his friends who creates life-like Vito masks which they then distribute to other overweight gentlemen. Some of Bam's crew find the hummer while Dunn and Vito are at a bowling alley and decide that the best way to make sure the hummer goes nowhere until Bam gets there is to place a VW on top; when Vito and Dunn make a break for it, Dunn just guns the hummer, causing the VW to go flying off the back. The fugitives then head to New York, with Bam and crew in pursuit. Vito wants a disguise, so Dunn, being a quirky fellow, takes him to a costume shop and dressed him up like Waldo, as in "Where's Waldo"; when Bam and the crew eventually spot them, they don't seem to get the joke. Dunn shoves Vito in a taxi, and then gets tackled and handcuffed to a bike stand by Bam and company. Having lost Vito, they head back home; the next day Bam gets a call from Vito to meet him at an old rock quarry. When they get there, Vito tells Bam that he's destroyed too much crap that belonged to other people, and it was time he lost something of his. He then points across the chasm, where the hummer is being lifted off the ground by some heavy machinery, with its engine gunned. Bam is convinced Vito doesn't have the guts, but Vito give the signal, the hummer is lowered to the ground, and then proceeds to speed off into the ravine, plunging to its doom. Bam, to his credit, took it well; he was just impressed that Vito planned the whole thing. The reason this was my favorite episode was two fold: first, it had a high "incoherent Vito" quotient, and second, they actually managed to get the better of Bam.

So, there you go, my Viva La Bam experience. Yes, there were quite a few moments that made me laugh, but I think this is a show that I can only take in small doses before it wears on me; in particular, Bam's total disregard for the possessions of others (such as when he decides to "help" Vito pack for the Brazil trip by breaking into Vito's place and throwing his clothes into a woodchipper) drives me insane. Yeah, I'm sure most of it gets replaced, but the lack of respect pains me.

I hope that satisfies you, Doc; if not, well, tough. Just be glad you made me a Dirty Jobs convert.